The same house we bought in 2006, was already over our buy price by 2011. And by 2017, it was almost 25% more.

The Irvine motto is "Slower to drop, faster to rise."

This seems like an extreme corner case. 2006 was the peak of the market and by most accounts didn't get back to this level until 2016/2017. 2011/2012 is generally considered the bottom of the market.

Probably, I should have added the caveat that this was *my* experience. Although I did check comps for similar homes... remember 3CGW homes are collector items.

So if your case was an extreme outlier it should be ignored when examining the data.

In general, less desirable homes, like the condo I bought, crashed the hardest. That's because the financial profiles of condo owners are typically weaker than SFR owners. The ability to hang on during a recession is not as strong, so you end up with more foreclosures / short sales, plus a lot of buyers that used subprime / toxic financing to begin with. (This time around, substitute FHA financing for subprime and the same thing applies.)

For a 3CWG in Irvine, that level of home is harder to attain to begin with, so the financial profiles of those owners is stronger. That means fewer foreclosures in your segment and smaller price drops, plus a faster recovery.

Nonetheless, it made sense to rent from '06-'11 for most prospective Irvine buyers.

Concerning the current downturn, I would say existing owners should just stay put. This is because they would pay so much in closing costs to both sell and then re-buy again near the bottom, that it would negate a huge portion of the savings they would achieve by renting. Whereas, first time buyers would benefit greatly by being cautious (and wise) right now.

Irvine prices are falling.Irvine rents are falling.Mortgage rates are falling.

There is absolutely no incentive for first time buyers to rush in right now.

So if your case was an extreme outlier it should be ignored when examining the data.

I can't be sure it was. As I said, other 3CWGs I looked at had similar value retention.

And I will stick to my contention that real estate is not just about data. Even extreme outliers can't be ignored because you have to consider why there are outliers to understand the effect on the market. As you said, maybe because all I was looking at was 3CWGs. Even the "data" study that IHB did showed that a 3rd car garage had the most value-add for homes (which of course has been ignored by all new home builders today).

All the people during the last crash who just looked at data predicted over 50% drops for Irvine and "ignored" the FCB buyers as a reason why there was better stability than surrounding cities now recognize those FCB "outliers".

Data said there was no way the Fed would create an environment where rates would drop to record lows. Now that "outlier" of a ~3% mortgage is the norm.

Reported record lows in sales volume the last year and a half was suppose to produce measurable price drops... but so far it's only been 1-5% depending on the housing stock? And as I've said, that's on the low end compared to previous drops the last 8 years which have been as high as 15%. I don't remember a lot of discussion about a "slowdown" during 2011 or 2016 and those drops were more than the current one.